The “i” stands for “improved”.
Improved, as in revised and thus better than the predecessor in terms of torsion resistance, and temperature stability.

The LS3i features a few minor refinements, such as:
– solid reverse side (no more inserted plate)
– slightly larger front label (but same OLED)
– less torsion and bending sensitivity
– less temperature sensitivity (almost perfect temp. compensation)
– better IP rating (IP68-0.1m instead of IP67)

The specs, electronics, OLED display, etc. remain the same.

Please note that when Bluetooth is connected (BT symbol inverted), the LS3 will refuse to switch to 640/1280Hz.
This is because BT can not transmit these speeds reliably, therefore they are blocked.
To switch to 640/1280 you need to either disconnect the smartphone app, or simply “kill” the app and then reboot your LS3.
You can however run on-board logging (10-40Hz), and have a BT connection to your phone to monitor things and/or also run a log in the app.
App and on-board logging settings are independent of each other. 

If you need precise load readings, take good care to not attach any connectors to the LS3 which apply torsion force to the load eyes!
These include e.g.: Girth hitch, clove hitch, any “high grip” textile material such as load slings, thick ropes, etc.
Also, any not perfectly fitting metal connector might apply torsion to the load eye and distort the reading.
In essence the LS3 may not see any “bending force” in lateral direction to ensure precise readings!
I will upload some images soon to better illustrate the issue. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Power Save & Lock is activated by default @ 300 seconds (5 Minutes). You can modify this in the “MENU / User Settings / Power save & lock” setting.
You can also select one of three power save modes (Min, Medium, Max) in the same menu. They differ in the size of fonts and the display interval.
Power-Save will kick in when no button is pressed or no load change has occurred within the defined time span. The buttons are locked during power save to avoid accidental button presses.
To deactivate power save you press the PWR+ZERO buttons simultaneously. When in main screen you can instantly activate power save mode manually by pressing the same combination.

Auto power off is set at 10 minutes by default. You can change this in the “MENU / User Settings / Auto power off” setting.
There you can define an auto power off delay from 1 Min. to 60 Min.
The auto power off will kick in when no button is pressed or no load change has occurred within the defined time span.

The battery symbol will flash if the battery is at 20% charge or lower if no power is connected.
When battery power is very low, the LS3 will power down itself to avoid a total battery power drain!
When battery power drops to a critical level (around 3.0V) the LS3 will power off right after showing the boot screen.
This avoids a battery deep discharge which would damage the battery.
Note: a critical battery level can only occur when you let battery drain in the MENU, where the power management features are disabled.

• The ports are marked, bottom one with: 5V 1A – this is the charging port. Plugging power to the top port will have no effect.
• You can use a 2A charger if you need to charge high speed but we recommend to use max. 1A (better 0,5A) to preserve battery life.
• Speaking of battery preservation: keep the battery charge between 20% and 80% (2 lines, and 8 lines in the battery symbol), and never charge the battery when the display reads an internal temp. lower than 5°C!
• Like any device the LS3 can be on or off while charging.
• Once power is connected a flash will display inside the battery symbol. If the LS3 is off the battery symbol with flash will be shown.
• If the battery isn’t full it will charge, which is indicated by a cycling battery symbol. Charging and symbol cycle will stop once the battery is full. The battery can not overcharge.
• The battery can’t be fully discharged. The intelligent electronics will power down the LS3 before the battery reaches 3.0V to avoid damage to the battery. In this state the LS3 can’t be powered on unless power is supplied. Note: no data or settings will ever be lost in any case because the LS3 is equipped with flash-memory (like a flash drive) which needs no power to keep data.
• The USB ports are water proof but you must obviously avoid dirt/debris inside the ports else the USB plug can’t be attached. Using a strip of tape to cover the ports is a good idea when using the LS3 in a dirt/debris infested area.
• Battery life: if you heed all these common lithium battery recommendations it will last 5 years easily with almost full capacity because the LS3 is charged much less frequently than e.g. a smartphone. 500 charging cycles will not significantly reduce the lithium-polymer batteries capacity inside the LS3, whereas fully draining and fully charging, extreme heat and cold (<-10°C and >60°C), and long-time discharged storage will.

The LineScale can be calibrated by the user.
It has two calibration routines built in to the firmware: Simple Calibration (2 point), and Linear Calibration (7 point). These are accessible via the Service-Menu.
Please be aware that a faulty calibration will render your unit useless, and can not be reverted or reset to factory defaults.
You need a reliable reference load cell, and a means of generating minimum one load of about 10kN that can be exactly held for at least 5-10 seconds.
For Linear Calibration (suggested): you need min. 6 loads of 1-6kN. In any case: the load HAS to be held constant for 5-10 seconds!
We suggest to have calibration done by a professional by means of a certified load cell, and tensile machine.
You may download the Calibration Manual below in the “Manuals” section.

The ports are marked, bottom one with: 5V 1A – this is the charging port, which is also used for USB UART connection to the PC. Plugging a powered USB cable to the top port will have no effect.

The USB ports are water proof but you must obviously avoid dirt/debris inside the ports else the USB plug can’t be attached. Using a strip of tape to cover the ports is a good idea when using the LS3 in a dirt/debris infested area.

When a recorded log is complete it must be written (saved) from log cache to log memory. During this process (while the LS3 display shows “Saving log to memory”) logging can not continue which would result in a few seconds lost data… to compensate for this we can use the Pre-Capture feature ?
Pre-Capturing is a background process which is never interrupted. This means the Pre-Capt-Cache is constantly fed with load data points as soon as LOG is ON. It’s an endless 4608 data point stack that, when full, drops the oldest data point when a new one comes in.
To avoid losing any data in the next log during the log saving process, you must set a pre-capture-time that is longer than the max. saving-time. A good reference value is 6 seconds. The LS3 should never take more time than that to save a completely full log with the max 23040 data points to memory.
If you record shorter logs (e.g. only 50% of the max length) you can reduce the pre-capture-time respectively.
Here you can download a ZIP file with two consecutive 640Hz 30 sec, 6 sec logs and the corresponding plots:
I have overlayed the plots to visualize the about 2.5 second overlap, showing that no data was lost during the about 4 sec saving-time.

Whenever you set the stop-trigger above the start-trigger the LOG will be ended immediately.
This is because the stop-trigger will stop a log whenever the load is below the threshold.

“Max. log rec. time” & “Min. log rec. time” / “Pre-capture rec. time” setting per log @ scan rate:
– 10Hz: 1920 sec. (32 min.) / 384 sec. (6 min.)
– 40Hz: 480 sec. (8 min.) / 96 sec. (1.5 min.)
– 640Hz: 30 / 6 sec.
– 1280Hz: 15 / 3 sec. 
Each of these log settings is saved separately for each of the four speed settings!
(so if you set different times for different speeds, and you toggle the speed, the respective setting for that speed is loaded).

Having space for 100 such log files in onboard memory, this adds up to 2.3 million data points until LS3 memory is full.
Thats a total on-board log time (incl. max. pre-capture time) of:
– @10Hz: ca. 63 hours
– @40 Hz: ca. 16 hours
– @640Hz: ca. 1 hour
– @1280Hz: ca. 30 minutes

When you select a rec-time that exceeds the max storable size for one log-slot in the current scan rate, the system will reset it to the max. time for that scan rate.
E.g. you set 60 seconds @ 640 Hz, the LS3 will reset that to 30 seconds because that’s the max length per log @ 640Hz. The same goes for “min. log rec time” and “Pre-capture rec time”. See details about the max log size in the following…